Re: Twilight Zone Fish

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: I am posting here a breeding experiment I undertook using VCP scores as the selection criteria. This was originally posted in the alt.games.aquazone newsgroup. 

: On Jan 12th Mirra posted an interesting message regarding VCP scores in guppies in the newsgroup. I have never paid any attention to these scores and was intrigued by the potential this aspect of guppy breeding might offer. One morning I was working with a strain of albino tux in an attempt to concentrate a darker blue overlay to produce an albino white body cobalt blue tux. The technique I was employing utilized parent/sibling back-crosses. I noticed one female with a vigor rating of 81 (whoa,look at her!) and decided to see what would happen if I selected pairs based only on VCP scores from this point. Average VCP scores for this generation were V=46, C=44 and P=55. 

: Vigor ratings improved steadily with each generation, reaching 88 within six generations for the whole brood. I then included courage ratings in the selection process and this too improved but at a slower rate. I started number naming each brood using their VCP scores to better track the progress. Example: a female with V=94,C=56,P=35 would become 945635f9, f9 being her original number name (started looking like serial numbers). Spotting the hightest rated pair in each generation using this system became quicker for me. 

: Power scores also improved but at a slower rate. By generation 37 the VCP scores for the entire brood were V=96,C=84,P=81, with an occassional wimp/runt showing up with a drastically lower score. From this point C and P scores slowly (and I mean slowly) improved. I called it quits when I reached scores of V=96,C=84,P=99. Even with the warping procedure I use this experiment was proving very time consuming and I was at generation 116! I ususally consider a homozygous strain soundly fixed by the F14(or heterozygous) so F116 seemed ridiculous. 

: I found that both males and females will pass higher ratings to their kids. Males or females would show improvement in one or more ratings and pass this trait along. I reached back a generation or two whenever a higher rated individual did not appear in the current generation but this was not the norm. 

: For me the bottom line is that the phenotype of this strain did not change at all. Being a visual breeder of guppies, I'm left with the thought "why bother?". I named this strain "Warrior Blues" and filed them away for future out-crosses.

: I had hoped to achieve ratings of 100 for V, C and P but lost interest in the pursuit of a "super guppy". 

: All this in the interest of Darwinism. 

: Don

: :   I have created mutant twilight zone fish...

: :   I was trying to breed a pure breeding strain of white tailed tuxes, just like the ones from the CD. So I bred a pair, bred two of the offspring, etc down to the 9th generation.

: :   Did the same with that generation, and they had 6 fry, 4 males 2 females. I named/numbered them like this:
: :   Number     Gender    Color    VCP
: : F10-WT-01 -- Female -- N/A   -- 56/46/57
: : F10-WT-02 -- Male   -- Grey  -- 57/46/56
: : F10-WT-03 -- Female -- N/A   -- 56/46/57
: : F10-WT-04 -- Male   -- White -- 39/46/57
: : F10-WT-05 -- Male   -- White -- 56/46/57
: : F10-WT-06 -- Male   -- White -- 56/46/57

: :   Bred two of these (01 and 05) and got six fry, 2 females, 4 males, with EXACTLY the same stats as above, colors, numbers, etc.

: :   Ok... bred two of those. Got the exact same results AGAIN. Only thing that's changing here is the names of the fish (The number after the F goes up by 1 each time). I get to F12 and decide enough of this, maybe I inbred too much... I crossed back a female from the F7 generation.

: :   She had 6 fry, 4 male, 2 female... the EXACT SAME STATS AGAIN!

: :   Argh!

: :   Finally broke out of it by breeding to a female from the F1 generation... but that was just WAYYYY to weird! Just thought I'd share my weird twilight zone fish... heh. Gonna save these to drive my sister up the wall... "Hey, I'm phycic! I bet that if I breed any two of these fish in this file I'll get babies with these exact stats and colors!"

: :   I wanted them to breed true, but that's a little overboard!
: :   


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